DINEQ · Tracking discoursal shift in news media representation of economic inequality: developing and applying corpus linguistic and critical discourse analysis methods

Tracking discoursal shift in news media representation of economic inequality: developing and applying corpus linguistic and critical discourse analysis methods

Economists have documented that, since the 1970s, the UK has become a more unequal society, the gap between the richer and the poorer growing systematically from then onwards. Today, there is more relative poverty in the UK than 40+ years ago, and wealth is distributed in a more polarized way, with the top 10% of UK citizens owning 100 times more than the bottom 10%. In this economic context, one may ask how the UK has reached such a situation, not just to understand the process, but, more importantly, to identify some of the bases on which relevant agencies might try to slow it down and even reverse it, in the interests of a fairer allocation of resources for all UK citizens. This matter is important for many observers simply on moral or ethical grounds. But in addition to ethical considerations, it has been robustly demonstrated that people who live in more unequal conditions have worse health and social relations: life expectancy, mental illness, obesity, violence or drug use and abuse are just some of the factors that become affected by economic inequality. Although economic inequality is addressed by economists, sociologists and political scientists, linguists can and should contribute to the debate, because inequality and a toleration of inequality, is in part maintained through the discourses a society deploys. In this sense, arguments on the role of newspaper discourse have developed since the late 1980s, with critical linguistics analysts claiming that news media not only report thoughts and actions in society, but also contribute to society attitudes and expectations towards different issues. This means that newspapers may also have contributed to changes in the way society thinks by representing new attitudes and beliefs as habitual, the new normal and common sense, and thus making society less resistant to such changes. Turning back to the problem of economic inequality, over the last 50 years it is arguable that certain influential British newspapers may have changed the way their readers are encouraged to think about the rich and the poor, what is fair and unfair and what in the prevailing circumstances the state can reasonably do and cannot. In this context, the overall aim of DINEQ has been to look for a discursive change in the way that the right-of-centre UK press has represented economic inequality and related matters since 1970s. The focus has been placed on the right-of-centre press because it has been assumed that these newspapers represent a broad rightward-moving socioeconomic trend that is more approvingly with the economic and societal changes just mentioned.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union